Panorama Tour 2010 – Veteran’s category report

Team “One Click” represented Mr Price Cycling Club at the 2010 Panorama Tour in the veteran’s category. It was Gwyn Pine’s and my first time at this event and we unfortunately were seeded into start batch “D” on the first day. This meant that we had to go all out to get to the front of the race at the start of the first stage.

Stage 1 (115km, 2213m ascent). The racing started out fairly briskly in cool, misty conditions. Despite our initial hard effort, Gwyn and I managed to hang on to the front of the race until the first hot spot at 25km where I blew up. Gwyn, the strong man, helped and encouraged me but we still lost contact with the leaders of the Vets category and we grovelled for another 90km over many energy sapping climbs and down some fast descents (max speed just on 90km/h). With Gwyn’s tenacity and strength we finally made it home as 5th Vets (23rd overall) 4 minutes down on the other 4 Vets teams.
Stage 2 (80km, 1192m ascent). I had heard about the neutral zone and that it was very easy to get dropped in it because of the high speed that the peleton rode at. However, nothing could prepare me for the actual experience. It seemed as if the speed was the same going up the hills as going down. Fortunately after the neutral zone the pace became a little more manageable. The peleton rode a fairly comfortable pace for the first 50 km but with 30 km to go the road suddenly kicked up all the way home and the pace hotted up. All the leading Vets teams stayed together in the second group with the front group being made up of the top overall GC contenders. Somewhere along the line a Vet team got away and ended up wining the stage despite being some 10 minutes down on the GC. Gwyn and I had a far better ride and ended the stage 4th in the Vets (24th overall). Our GC position remained unchanged at 5th even though we had made up a few seconds on the stage. We gained confidence in this stage because we started seeing cracks appearing in some of our opponents.

Stage 3 (113km, 2055m ascent). Again the neutral zone was far from being a normal neutral zone but at least Gwyn and I knew what to expect. The racing was again fairly brisk with Gwyn attacking the peleton in the first 6km of the stage which forced me to try and bridge to him. We were quickly brought back on the first real uphill and the peleton split up as we began the climb up Spitskop (5.5km at 5.3% gradient) to the hot spot. Gwyn and I both gained a small gap on the leading Vets teams on the early parts of the climb but at the hot spot we had been caught. The pace however caused a split and with some teams puncturing, 3 Vets teams got away. On the decent into Sabie we reached speeds of up to 85km/h and covered the next 11km in just over 10 minutes. Unfortunately Long Tom Pass loomed and put an end to our speedy run. The next 8.1km were all uphill with an average gradient of 5.2%. Once over Long Tom the remaining Vets teams worked together to maintain the gap that we had over the chasing teams which also meant that Gwyn and I could potentially move into 3rd on the GC. Fortunately we were able to maintain the hard effort and were rewarded by gaining 7 minutes over the next Vet team to put us comfortably into 3rd for the stage and on the GC. We were still around 4 minutes down on the 2nd Vet team on GC, we knew that the time trial would require our best effort. The first place GC was beyond our reach over a 24km time trial.

Stage 4 (24km time trial, 454m ascent). We started 19th last (being 19th overall on GC) just behind Graeme Cronje and Cherise Taylor with the 4th placed Vets team 1 minute ahead of us. Gwyn, being the time trial specialist, set a cracking pace which had me on the rivet from the gun. He powered us through the time trial both up the drags and down the descents enabling us to catch the 4th placed Vets team within the first 10km of the time trial. Now we knew that we had gained another minute on the 4th place but still pushed on hard unfortunately not being able to catch Graeme and Cherise! We ended the tour with a rewarding 22nd best TT overall (42:23) and 2nd Vet for the stage. Despite gaining more than 30 seconds on the 2nd placed Vets team on GC, we remained 3rd on GC at the end of the tour and 17th overall in a time of 9:58:38.

Many thanks to Gwyn Pine who is not only awesomely strong but also always so positive.

Congratulations to Isabel Moolman and Mark Davel for a fine, consistent performance to take 2nd overall in the Mixed category.

Iven Scharein